Gravesend (7 page)

“This is like fucking Afghanistan!” McKenna said.

Conway snorted, thinking this was just a gluey hallucination now, not even real.

Back in the car, driving again, Conway opened a beer in his lap. He brought it to his mouth on the sly, everything feeling slo-mo weird.

Home was in front of them now somehow, behind a telephone pole and an extra high-seeming curve. Out of the car then. Leaving the doors unlocked. They stumbled through the front gate, beers in pockets, McKenna with three under each arm, his box gone soggy. Conway balanced his twelve-pack on his head and tried to make the key fit the hole. Pop was there behind the curtain, looking fish-eyed like in a carnival mirror. He opened the door.

“Pop,” McKenna said. “Good old Pop.”

Pop said, “You boys should be ashamed.”

“The bozo shawl bead claimed,” McKenna said. “You’re right, Pop.” He reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a hundred percent correct.”

Conway brought the twelve-pack down to his chest and cradled it. He led the way inside. Pop yapped at them, but Conway took McKenna right to his room and closed the door. He put the box down, popped a beer, and sucked down half. Pop was on the other side of the door, reminding him that he was twenty-goddamn-nine. But Conway felt fourteen the whole time, getting hammered, closing the bedroom door, his old man yelling at him. He completed the picture: turned his stereo on loud.
Road to Ruin
. The whole house shaking. Let the cops come.

McKenna sat on the bed, opened a beer with his teeth. It exploded, foam dribbling on his lap and the twisted blankets under him.

Feeling like maybe he really was fourteen again, Conway remembered things in flashes: coming home drunk one night and seeing Duncan and Davey Ignozzi, a kid they’d known since he moved to the neighborhood after the Mets won the Series, making out. They both had their shirts off, a crazy hot summer night, the pavement seeming to cook the city, and they both had the same creamy skin, the same frosted nipples, no hair in their pits. It took Conway a second to understand what he was seeing. “Take a picture,” Duncan had said that night after noticing him. Conway had gone to his room then and turned on the stereo, finding an airplane-sized bottle of Johnnie Walker Red he’d stolen from Pop in the stash-box under his bed and drinking it down.

Another flash: Pop coming into his room the night Duncan was killed. Ghost-faced. Eyes looking gone, like there were only the whites. His lips quivering. His hands shaking. Conway didn’t believe what he was saying straight off. He went out to the kitchen and saw his mother at the table with a quart of Aristocrat vodka, pouring herself shot after shot in a Golden Nugget mug. She’d been on the wagon for a few years before that and made no hesitation to fall off five minutes after the cops called with news of what had happened to Duncan.

In this room, at twenty-two, Conway had stabbed himself in the arm with a cheapo switchblade. Right above the wrist. The knife went down to the nerve and he lost feeling in his hand for over four years and still had a numb, pins-and-needles feeling in his fingers on days the weather was bad. He was drunk and had just been broken up with by a girl named Kristy Caggiano, who he’d started dating in college. He stabbed himself in front of Kristy, who was reading him a letter she’d written about why they were done. When the blood started spurting out, things went hazy, but he remembered Kristy getting him outside and in her car, Pop not knowing what was going on, and then she dropped him at the door of the Victory ER. He woke up the next morning in the cold glow of the hospital. A nurse had said, “You glad you’re alive?”

“Not really,” he’d said.

“Well, you are,” she’d said. “Alive. You should be happy.”

“Thank you,” he’d said. “But I’m not happy.”

They made him talk to a psychologist before he left the hospital in a sling. And since his father couldn’t pick him up, and since his mother was nowhere to be found, it was McKenna who showed up in his Maxima, slurping orange soda and gin.

“Dude,” he’d said. “You almost died.”

Yet another flash: Duncan and him sharing the room back before Duncan moved his stuff into the basement. They’d sit on the bed playing Battleship or Yahtzee, Z100 on, or listening to
Nevermind
on cassette, Duncan saying in a hundred years people were still going to have pictures of Kurt Cobain up on their walls, that Nirvana was the best band ever, that Conway had a lot to learn about music. Other days Duncan had made Conway listen to The Replacements, The Pixies, Sebadoh, always in this room, always sitting Indian-style on the floor, Duncan sometimes taking out a one-hitter and smoking, finally passing it to Conway an afternoon when nobody else was around.

Pop banging on the door jerked Conway back into the present. He wasn’t fourteen. He was twenty-nine, drunk as shit, and he had failed at everything.

Conway opened the door, said nothing.

“Turn that shit down,” Pop said. “Now. We got neighbors for Chrissakes.
Disgraziato
.” Italian always meant Pop was at his maddest.

Conway turned the volume down to one. “Sorry,” he said.

“You boys should be ashamed.”

McKenna was lying back on the bed now, not sleeping, but the beer had spilled out next to him.

“You’re how old?” Pop said.

“I’m young,” Conway said.

“You’re not young.”

“Please get out. Leave me alone.”

“This guy’s got a wife, no?” Pop motioned to McKenna. “She’s not gonna worry?”

“Go.” Conway put his hand on Pop’s shoulder and gave him a slight push.

“You keep your hands off me.”

Conway pushed harder and Pop fell back over the threshold onto the kitchen linoleum, landing on his ass and hands, grunting, his supposedly bad leg curled up under him.

“You’re fine,” Conway said. “You’re not even sick. Go be fine in your room.”

Tears showed in Pop’s eyes. He worked himself up to his hands and knees. “You’re gonna go to hell for treating your old man like this.”

Conway slammed the door and locked it. He plugged his headphones into the stereo and turned the volume back up, sitting with his back against the dresser, letting the music blast a hole in his head.

Next morning, Conway got up and went to work. He left McKenna asleep on his bed, said nothing to Pop as he passed him at the kitchen table drinking coffee out of his green plastic cup, buttering a heel of Italian bread. He walked straight to Rite Aid, looking, he imagined, like a dried-up turd with his hair all over the place, his four-day beard, his chapped lips and rank clothes. He got there and Stephanie came right at him, bright in her pharmacist whites, and she tried to convince him to go home and rest, she’d cover for him.

“I’m not going home,” Conway said.

“What’s going on?” Stephanie said. “You okay?”

Conway wasn’t yet hung-over. He was still drunk. His temples pounded and the world seemed wavy and bright. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

He mimicked her. “‘You don’t look fine.’ Mind your own business, Steph, huh?”

“Listen, Con, I think you need to go home.”

“You’re ordering me?”

Conway walked over to the register, the one he was meant to man, and the front doors whooshed open and Alessandra Biagini walked in. Stephanie was right behind him. She pushed past him and met Alessandra with an embrace. “It’s so good to see you in here,” Stephanie said.

“You too,” Alessandra said.

“You remember Conway D’Innocenzio?”

Alessandra nodded. “We ran into each other yesterday.”

“Conway’s having a hard day,” Stephanie said.

Conway was just staring at Alessandra, staring through her, images of her sitting in front of him at MPB mixing with images of her talking to Ray Boy down on the promenade in his mind’s eye.

“You okay, Conway?” Alessandra said.

“He’s just having a hard day.” Stephanie lifted a fake bottle to her lips.

“I just need to pick up a prescription for my dad.”

“Sure, I’ll help you. One sec.”

“I need some hydrocortisone, too.”

“We’ll pass right by it on the way to the pharmacy. I’ll show you.”

Still staring right at Alessandra, Conway said, “Fuck were you talking to him about last night?”

“Excuse me?” Alessandra said.

“You know.”

“What are you saying?”

“I saw you. Talking to Ray Boy. About what?”

“You saw me?”

“I was down by the water.”

“Leave it alone, Conway,” Stephanie said. “You’re drunk.”

“You followed me?” Alessandra said.

“I saw you, that’s it. You visit my brother’s grave and then you chat up his killer?”

“Excuse me,” Alessandra said. She backed up and made a move for the door.

“Fuck are you talking to this guy about? I need to know. You guys going to get coffee? He’s a nice guy now? That it?” Conway was moving toward her as she back-pedaled, wanting to get right in her face, hoping his beery breath blinded her, hoping she would let down her guard and hug him and beg for forgiveness.

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Don’t lie.”

Stephanie said, “He’s just drunk. Forget it. Don’t pay any attention.”

“Yeah, I’m drunk,” Conway said.

Alessandra turned around. “I’ll come back later, Steph.” She tried to walk out the wrong set of doors, the ones that whooshed in, and had to hop over a small chain to get to the exit.

“I won’t forget I saw that,” Conway said.

The doors opened out, and Alessandra was gone, crossing under the El and turning the corner behind McDonald’s.

“Real nice,” Stephanie said. “Welcome back, Alessandra.”

Conway took off his red apron and flung it down on the ground. “Who needs this shit anyway?” he said.

“Don’t you go out there and follow her,” Stephanie said.

Conway said nothing and walked out into the blazing glare, a D passing overhead on the El, cars honking out in front of the fire station as a fireman tried to guide a truck back into the garage. Conway looked over at where Alessandra had just been. Follow her? Fuck would he do that for anyway? Let her go. It was time to wake up McKenna and practice shooting.

Seven

Eugene hated mornings most. Especially Monday mornings. He hated waking up to the alarm clock buzz, five-thirty, the little clock vibrating on his dresser, and he hated sitting up in the dark and stretching. He hated his breath in the morning, the way he tasted it on his tongue and teeth. He hated limping to the bathroom, little squiggles of dust caught between the pink hallway rug and the wall, the rug threaded down to bare spots in the places where his feet fell.

He hated the bathroom: pink tiles and moldy grout and the sick glow of the light over the sink that hurt his first-thing-in-the-morning eyes. He hated showers this early, the most depressing thing ever, scrubbing himself with Irish Spring in the dark stall, the water pressure so hard that it felt like sandpaper against his skin, closing his eyes, the water sounding like bad weather.

He hated his body. He hated his body covered in soap. He hated getting out of the shower, stepping on the rose-colored mat, and drying off over the toilet. He hated the way the towels felt. His mother sprayed them with starch before washing them and line-dried them in the backyard over the fig trees and they were stiff like ironing boards, raw against his skin, full of holes with almost-serrated edges, nothing like the soft towels in Sweat’s house.

He hated walking back to his room, getting dressed, crumpled boxers first, wife-beater, shitty uniform, clip-on OLN tie. He hated trying to do something with his hair. Other guys had fades and used gels. His hair was kinky, impossible to spike, and there was nothing to do except shave it or to plaster it down in a Caesar.

He hated breakfast with his mom, coffee and cereal and fruit, her reading the
Daily News
, trying to talk about the weather, WINS on in the background. He hated the smell of his mother in the morning, Jergen’s lotion and Listerine breath. He hated the way she filed her nails without paying attention, doing everything at once: talking, listening, reading, eating, filing. He hated the clock his mother had up on the wall in the kitchen, some Disney bullshit that played movie theme songs every hour. At six, it was always
Beauty and the Beast
, Eugene wanting to rip the thing off the wall and stomp it to death. He hated how his mother handed him his lunch, still wrote EUGENE on it in black Sharpie with a flowery design underneath like he was in third grade. He hated the way his mother said goodbye, patting him on the head and kissing his cheek, him taking it, feeling retarded, her practically saying, “I hope my special little man has a special day.”

Eugene hated the walk to the bus stop, six blocks, and he hated that he had to stop at the garbage bin by P.S. 101 and throw out the bag his lunch came in because then he had to just dump his sandwich and chips and drink in his backpack and sometimes they opened up and made a mess.

He hated how heavy his backpack was, big textbooks he never cracked, binders full of loose leaf, his sneakers on gym days. The zipper stressed so hard that its teeth pressed out.

He hated standing at the bus stop, under the El, waiting for the B1. He hated the cars driving by. He wished Sweat would just pick him up. He hated the buses, the way they pulled up and wheezed, the way they lowered themselves to you, and he hated every bus driver on the route. He knew them all, a fat black lady, a skinny Chinese guy, a not-Italian white guy with teeth like brown pebbles, another not-Italian white guy with a bushy red chin beard and dry skin around his nose. He hated showing the driver his bus pass, taking out his flimsy Velcro wallet and flashing it, the driver always saying, even after they got to know him, to take it out and hand it over and then inspecting it closely as if he’d take the time to fake it, as if he’d be on the fucking bus if he didn’t have to be.

He hated the wheelchair lady that always seemed to be getting on the bus the same time as him no matter when he got there. Getting on and off buses was pretty much all she did with her life, as far as he could tell. She was there in the afternoons, too. He hated the process of getting her on the bus, the way the driver put on the hazards, stopped up traffic, got out with a big ring of keys, went around to the back of the bus, and turned the rear steps into a lift. It was sort of amazing the first time Eugene saw it but now he was sick of it. The lift went up slowly, and Eugene stared at the lady’s peg-leg, her dirty wheelchair, her shopping bags, and her crusty hat with a pigeon feather in it. He hated that the bus driver had to kick people out of the handicapped section and then scoop up the row of seats to strap her in. Wheelchair Lady gave the shit eye to everyone on the bus, like this was her privilege and they should be happy no matter how long it took. Sometimes it took ten minutes, the driver struggling with the straps, Wheelchair Lady not cooperating, others standing around, checking their cell phones and watches, cars behind the bus beeping. When it was finally done, the driver fixed the rear steps, went back to the front of the bus and got it moving. Inevitably, though, Wheelchair Lady would signal for a stop by Eighteenth Avenue. She was never on for more than two or three stops and then the whole process happened in reverse. Other OLN students didn’t really get on until they hit Dyker Heights so Eugene was alone in witnessing this, his headphones on, blasting hip-hop, trying to drown it all out.

He hated the long ride to school, stopping at almost every corner, it seemed. He hated when other guys from the school finally did get on: Jimmy Tanico, Billy Morris, Chris Burke, Tony Volpe, Zip Maroney, Petey Salerno. Then he had to act with them, swagger, when all he wanted to do was let the music wake him up.

He hated arriving at school, boys gathered around outside the front gate, an army of buses coming from fifty different neighborhoods shivering at the curb, the juniors and seniors pulled up in their cars across the street, girls from Kearney and Fontbonne in their front seats putting on makeup, chewing gum, turning up the radio. Eugene hated making his way through the crowd, up the front steps, and passing under the sign that said THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE. Fuck truth were they talking about? He hated the glass case in the main alcove that was a monument to Chris Mullin, the school’s most famous alum. Mullin’s high school picture was blown up. So were his OLN team picture, a shot of him mid-three in a St. John’s-Georgetown Big East tourney game, an action snap from his Golden State heyday, and—framed, signed, the centerpiece—a picture of him from when he was on Team USA, looking coked out, eyes hazy, that military haircut revealing an Irish nastiness in his features. There was also a ball he’d signed and a newspaper clipping about him dancing with some retards at a Ryken Club event.

Eugene hated passing by the main office and the theater on the way to his locker, Brother Dennis standing there, the old alkie with a nose that looked like it had been formed out of bloodshot Silly Putty, whacking kids in the arm, making like he was going to trip them, a real comedian. Aherne, the principal, had no real job for the old man so he made him patrol the halls. Eugene hated when Brother Dennis said something to him, maybe, “Mr. Calabrese, chin up, it’s not the end of the world.” Or: “Keep on the sunny side, Mr. Calabrese.” He wanted to punch the old alkie in the nuts or reach through his chest like in
Temple of Doom
and pull out his shitty prune of a heart and mash it. Eugene hated not being able to do that, just walking past, nodding.

He hated his locker, above Tommy Valentino’s. Tommy was tall, a B team basketball player who wasn’t very good, and he was always hunched over his locker in the morning, spooning sugar candy from an envelope into his mouth with a wooden stick and washing it down with Gatorade. Eugene hated how he had to work around Tommy to get in his locker.

He hated the clocks in the school. He hated the color of the walls, broccoli green on top fading into bad teeth yellow near the floor. He hated the elevators. He hated the staircases, smelling like ammonia and sadness. He hated the OLN uniform and the way everyone wore it with little variation. He hated the teachers, the Brothers and otherwise, even his English teacher, who pretended to be cool, talking about Kanye and sneaking cigs out the back door at lunch. He hated the advertisements for school plays in the halls. He pictured the school from above, like from a satellite, and he hated the way it looked, squirrelly students and defeated teachers all moving through a maze. He hated that he couldn’t just leave school and walk over to Owl’s Head Park or the Sixty-Ninth Street Pier. He hated that he couldn’t go to Constantino’s to get a slice for lunch like the juniors and seniors. He hated classes—Global Studies, Religion, English, Math, Biology, Italian—and he had to zone out to make it through them, pretend he was listening to music, practice his Uncle Ray Boy’s old tag in the margins of his notebooks. Eugene hated most things with a hate that tasted like broken glass.

This morning was no different. He hated with his eyes, with his mouth, with every motion he made, trying to turn his limp into a too-cool badass shuffle. Maybe teachers thought he was a dimwit joke of a kid, probably they were scared of him, probably—he liked to think anyway—they thought he was the kind of kid who could learn to build a bomb on the Internet and set it off during the school day.

He walked to Italian and sat in the back of the class even though Mr. Bonangelo had assigned him a seat up close. Mr. Bonangelo liked to keep troubled kids and troublemakers close to him. Eugene didn’t know which Mr. Bonangelo thought he was, but he hated the front of the room, hated Mr. Bonangelo breathing on him, hated his bad jokes. Mr. Bonangelo had a limp too, something about polio when he was a kid, and he was always using this to try to get in Eugene’s good graces. But that made Eugene hate him more, the guy thinking they were what, connected somehow?

“Eugene,” Mr. Bonangelo said, “please, up front now, son.”

Eugene ignored him.

“You want another detention?”

Eugene trudged up to the front of the class, sat next to Billy Morris. Billy looked like he’d just smoked up, eyes gone red and heavy, a rubberbandy look on his face.

Mr. Bonangelo said, “That’s a boy.”

That’s a boy.

Eugene folded open his notebook and started scratching lines in the margin with his pen.

Mr. Bonangelo cleared his throat. “Mr. Calabrese.”

Eugene said, “What, yo?”

“‘What, yo?’” Mr. Bonangelo said. He laughed. “‘What, yo?’ You must be kidding, Mr. Calabrese. Try again.”

“What?”

“Try: Yes, Mr. Bonangelo, sir?”

Some kids in the back of the class laughed.

Eugene stopped drawing in his margins. He squared up, shoulders out. “Fuck you, yo.”

Mr. Bonangelo’s face turned the color of spoiled meat. “To Principal Aherne’s. Now, Mr. Calabrese. Now.” He was rattled, almost quivering with rage, limping around in front of the chalkboard frantically. He had his phone out and was punching in a number.

Other guys in the class were stirring in their seats, pressing Mr. Bonangelo to choke Eugene to death. Vinny Liozzi said, “It’s worth losing your job, Mr. Bonangelo. Kill this kid.”

Eugene stood up, put his books in his backpack, and got out of the room as fast as he could. Mr. Bonangelo stuck his head out the door after him. “Wait right there, Mr. Calabrese. I just called Brother Dennis. He’s coming to accompany you. Make sure you don’t take any detours.”

Eugene stood still, staring at the floor. It was peach-colored with flecks of yellow and brown, and he’d never noticed just how ugly it was.

Brother Dennis came lumbering around the corner by the elevators, excited, acting as if his whole life had been leading up to this moment. “I hear Mr. Calabrese needs an escort,” he said, coming closer.

“He does indeed,” Mr. Bonangelo said.

“Well, then, I’m your man.” Brother Dennis put a hand on Eugene’s shoulder. “Come along, son.”

Eugene flinched.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a real live wire.” Brother Dennis nudged Eugene now.

Eugene said, “Keep your hands off me, yo.”

“‘Yo,’” Mr. Bonangelo said. “He says that a lot.”

Brother Dennis aped him, too. “‘Yo, yo, yo.’ Tough talk.”

“You want to know what this punk said to me, Brother?”

“I sure do.”

Bonangelo slumped his shoulders, did his best Eugene: “He said, ‘Eff you, yo.’ Except he said the word.”

“Disgusting talk.” Brother Dennis shook his head.

“No way for a young OLN man to speak,” Mr. Bonangelo said.

“Grounds for suspension, certainly. Maybe worse. What’ll your mother think, young man?”

Eugene shrugged.

Brother Dennis guided Eugene down the hallway, past the auditorium, to Principal Aherne’s office.

Martha, the secretary, was sitting behind a desk in the alcove outside of Aherne’s office, filing her nails.

“Mr. Bonangelo was having some problems with our young friend here,” Brother Dennis said.

“I’ll buzz him,” Martha said. She hit a button on the phone in front of her and bent over it to speak into the receiver. “He says go in.”

Brother Dennis opened Aherne’s door and showed Eugene in with a dramatic wave of his arm.

Principal Aherne was behind his desk. He closed a game of solitaire on his computer. “Mr. Calabrese,” he said. “Well, well, well. Sit down.”

Eugene sat down in the egg-brown wingback chair across from Aherne. Brother Dennis stood next to him, arms crossed. Aherne opened his desk drawer. He took out a clementine and peeled it. It smelled like someone had sprayed orange Lysol in the room. He piled the strips of rind in a used tissue. Eugene examined the other stuff on Aherne’s desk. A picture of his hollow-cheeked mother looking like a zombie. Fax machine. Picture of his wife and three kids, the youngest a girl who had Down’s Syndrome and always dressed like a ballerina. Box of Kleenex. A Derek Jeter bobblehead. A plaque remembering Brother Mathis, the old principal who’d lost his mind and wandered into Owl’s Head Park one night too many in a row and been put in a home where he lived out his last days in a haze of soft foods and fat nurses in bright scrubs. An eight-by-ten picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hung behind Aherne on the wall.